But still, it is not clear why she should have desired to appear first before Talbot and his English, and why she was now so annoyed at being separated from him by the Loire.

Did she think that the entrenched camp, Saint-Laurent-des-Orgerils, commanded by Scales, Suffolk, and Talbot would be attacked immediately?
Such an idea would never of itself have occurred to her, since she did not know the place, and no soldier would ever have put such madness into her head as an attack on an entrenched camp by a convoy of cattle and wagons.

Neither, as has so often been asserted, can she have thought of forcing a passage between the bastion Saint-Pouair and the outskirts of the wood, since of the bastions and of the forest she knew as little as of the rest.

If such had been her intention she would have announced it plainly to the Bastard; for she knew how to make her meaning clear, and even educated persons considered that she spoke well.

Then what was her idea?
It is not impossible to discover it if one remembers what must have been in the saint's mind at that time, or if one merely recollects by what words and deeds Jeanne had announced and prepared her mission.